The purpose of the present study was to investigate women ice hockey players’ aggressive and/or assertive behavioral intentions and factors that may have influenced these intentions using the Theory of Planned Behavior as a guide. This study used stimulated recall interviews as the main method of data acquisition. A systematic observation analysis was also employed to aid the stimulated recall interviews. Participants were university female ice hockey players. The results revealed several reasons for aggressive and assertive behaviors, including the score, the players’ attitude, and the influence of coaches, parents, teammates, and referees. As well, aspects of frustration, retaliation, and intimidation were discussed by the participants. These findings augment the literature on physicality in women’s ice hockey and demonstrate the usefulness of the Theory of Planned Behavior for understanding and explaining the factors influencing aggressive and assertive behaviors.

The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which outcome interdependence moderated the relationship between task conflict and group performance. Questionnaire data were collected from coaches (N = 175) of university athletic teams (N = 45). Analyses were conducted at the coaching staff level. Hierarchical regression, controlling for the effects of the sex of the team coached and the number of persons on the coaching staff, revealed that task conflict was negatively related to group performance. Moderated regression revealed that the aforementioned relationship was dependent upon the level of outcome interdependence. Specifically, when outcome interdependence was low, the relationship between task conflict and the team’s performance was negative; however, task conflict was positively related to the team’s performance when outcome interdependence was high. Results are discussed in terms of theoretical and practical implications.

The relative age effect (RAE) shows that the older one is relative to one’s peers in the same grouping or junior sport team the greater the probability of eventually becoming an elite athlete. The present study tracked the existence of the RAE among elite male and female Canadian ice hockey players and investigated the relationship between relative age and performance at the elite level. Year and month of birth as well as several performance measures (career games played, goals, total points, assists) were collected using the Hockey Hall of Fame Registry for males (N = 4195) and data from the Canadian Women’s National Championship in 2004 (N = 150) and in 2006 (N = 172) for females. Players’ birth-dates were organized by month into quartiles (Jan-Mar, Apr-June, July-Sep, Oct-Dec). Analyses revealed significant differences among quartiles in NHL players born after 1956 (X2 ranging from 8.31 to 28.02, all p < .05), suggesting that the relative age effect first manifested in the NHL within the late 1970s (average age of player entry into the NHL 21.8 years). No RAE was observed among birth quartiles in elite women players (p = .355). Further, there were no relative age discrepancies in career performance measures in the male players. These data reinforce the notion that the RAE is a complex phenomenon likely with a multitude of social and cultural antecedents.

Competition stress and emotions were examined for 65 futsal (small-sided soccer) players in Canada and Japan. The Tension and Effort Stress Inventory (TESI; Svebak et al., 1991) was administered to four teams, pregame and postgame for three games each, at futsal tournaments in both countries. Repeated measures MANOVA revealed a significant three-way interaction for effort stress and for nine TESI emotions, plus several significant two-way interactions. Japanese players felt more tension stress in connection with losing than Canadian players, while Canadian participants exhibited stronger effort stress before wins. In the examination of emotions, Canadians experienced more pleasant emotions after wins than after losses, and more unpleasant emotions after losses than after wins. However, Japanese players reported more unpleasant emotions after wins and more pleasant emotions after losses. They also experienced more unpleasant pregame emotions than the Canadians. Competition level and cultural attitudes toward individualism/collectivism are offered to explain these results.

The purpose of this explorative small-scale evaluation was to examine the effects of a ten-month team-based sport psychology service delivery aimed to enhance the coping skills of 21 professional soccer players. Principles from cognitive behaviour therapy were instrumental in each weekly match preparation. A 16-item screening questionnaire on the individual player’s perception of his coping capacity and strategies was dispensed to each player prior to and after the intervention period. It covered various aspects of coping skills before and during matches and addressed if and how each player would seek to help a team-mate with match performance problems. The comparison of pre and post service delivery scores showed a significant increase in the amount of sport psychology literature read, the use of specific coping skills during matches, and the offering of more specialized help to team-mates after the intervention.

An experiment was conducted to examine the respective roles of explicit rules about movement execution and direction of attention in learning and performing a novel perceptual-motor task. To this end, four groups of learners (34 participants in total) acquired the table tennis forehand (450 repetitions) under different instructions (explicit, implicit, movement focus, and environment focus learning) and were subsequently tested under increased performance pressure and secondary task loading. In the absence of any differences in acquisition between the groups, the results revealed that the accumulation of a large number of explicit rules about task execution (i.e., explicit learning) was detrimental to performance under pressure and secondary task loading. It was therefore concluded that the number of explicit rules accumulated, rather than direction of attention during learning, determines the robustness of the acquired skill to performance pressure.